The Drinking Studies Network is an interdisciplinary and international research group that connects scholars working on drink and drinking culture across different societies and time periods.
Founded in 2010 – initially as the Warwick Drinking Studies Network – we have since grown to have over 350 members (Network Members) from around the world. We act as a point of contact for anyone with an interest in the role of alcohol in any society, past or present, and we provide our members with news and updates about significant events in the field of drinking studies via our mailing list and twitter account. We also routinely organise our own events (Past Events and Future Events) and publications (Publications). In 2015, we introduced a number of ‘Research Clusters’ within the network, designed to bring together members with similar interests to organise events together and to foster collaborative research projects (Research Clusters). In 2021, we established a partnership with the journal The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs
The majority of our members are academics – with historians and social scientists particularly well represented – but we are a proudly interdisciplinary and open network, and welcome members from any scholarly discipline. We also welcome independent scholars, postgraduates, individuals associated with non-academic institutions, beer bloggers, journalists, public health workers, publicans – indeed anybody with a serious interest in understanding the role played by alcohol in societies past and/or present.
If you would like to join the network, please email drinkingstudies@gmail.com
The DSN Committee
Dr Emily Nicholls is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York, UK. She is the author of Negotiating Femininities in the Neoliberal Night-Time Economy: Too Much of a Girl?, co-convenor of the Sobriety, Abstinence and Moderation research cluster and co-Director of the Drinking Studies Network.
Pam Lock is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol. She works on alcohol in Victorian Fiction and Culture and her monograph ‘The Drunkard in Victorian Fiction and Culture’ will be out with EUP in 2025. Her British Library collection of drink-related Gothic stories, Dead Drunk (2023), is part of their Tales of the Weird series. She is co-Director of the Drinking Studies Network
Sam Goodman is Professor in English & Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. His research interests include alcohol, health and the medical humanities, and Empire and popular culture in the C.20th. He is the author of The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature and History after Empire (2022), and is the co-convenor of the Drinking Places research cluster, and co-Director of the Drinking Studies Network.
Phil Mellows is a freelance journalist specialising in alcohol policy and the UK pub and brewing industries, and the author of The Politics of Drinking blog. He is joint social media officer of the Drinking Studies Network.
Claire Markham (claire.markham@ntu.ac.uk) is Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology at Nottingham Trent University and works on the representations and experiences of contemporary rural pubs in England. She is joint social media officer of the Drinking Studies Network.
Amy Rankine is a PhD candidate at Queen Margaret University researching beer and masculinity on screen media. She is the Web Officer for the Drinking Studies Network.
Founders
Dr Mark Hailwood is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bristol. He is the author of Alehouses and Good Fellowship in Early Modern England and co-founder of the Drinking Studies Network.
Dr Deborah Toner is an Associate Professor of History. She is the author of Alcohol and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Mexico, editor of Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire and War, and co-founder of the Drinking Studies Network.
Header Image: Photograph of artwork “Hip, Hip, Hurrah!” (1888). Peder Severin Krøyer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Drinking Studies Network 